A Distant Epilogue
by atree
Summary: Alice returns to her beloved Wonderland one last time.


A Distant Epilogue

She drifts down from the sky on butterflies and maple leaves.

In here she is young and beautiful. Gone is her balding white hair, gone is her wrinkled grey skin, gone are her painful arthritic joints. Her hair has grown back black and long and lush, thousands of strands of silk flowing across her shoulders. Her skin is white porcelain. When she lands on the ground and takes a step, the sensation of walking upright without her cane is so alien that she falls to the ground, but the grass that cushions her fall is thicker and plusher than a carpet.

The sun is brighter than any she has ever seen. A stream runs by her feet and meanders through a meadow of wild grass and flowers – grass the colors of the rainbow and flowers that grow in squares and triangles and loops. Huge trees stemming their roots from solid rock tower toward the sky. Their great thick trunks intertwine like a puzzle box until it's impossible to tell where one tree starts and another begins. Even the air is different – clear and fresh, unlike the smog-filled air of London. She closes her eyes. She has done this many times before, but she hasn't been here in a long time, too long, and she has forgotten how much she misses the vast blue skies.

Awkwardly, she stands back up, wobbling on two legs. Fluidness comes quickly, though, and once she takes a step and then another and another, she gives a yell of joy and jumps into the air. The sky rushes to meet her. With a twirl of her skirt, she is five feet higher, and with another she is ten, and another, fifteen. She _flies_. Rising and rising above the ground, she hangs suspended like a water droplet caught in the sun. Below her, Wonderland stretches for miles. A soft gust of wind tugs at the edges of her dress, and reluctantly, she floats back down. But when she lands _this _time she is as graceful as a swan.

Over the sounds of flowing brook and bird song, she hears a tinkling, like a child blowing on a set of chimes. She cocks her head. Before her, a figure emerges from the air in mottled splashes of gold and white.

She brings her hand to her face. "Why am I never surprised to see you here?"

"You look into a mirror every day expecting to see your reflection." The cat's smile is all teeth. His gold eyes never blink, staring at her from bristling grey fur tattooed with swirls of dark blue. He had been frightening once, when she first saw him, but if nothing else she has learned not to judge a book by its cover, and now she treats the emaciated cat with the bloody teeth like an old friend.

"You've put on some weight," she notices.

"I found myself a better batch of catnip." His tail lazily flicks back and forth as he leans in towards her. "And how have _you _been, Alice? It's been quite a while since your last visit."

"Just dandy, thank you very much. I own an orphanage now, an old building. It's rather creaky at places, and sometimes during rains it leaks, but it's sturdy enough for the most part and completely fireproof. I must have twenty or thirty kids now, I could never remember. They call me 'Granny' – "

The cat's eyes are dark and flinty. "Oh please, Alice. We both know I'm not talking about _that_."

She spins, hands outstretched to gesture around her. The skirts of her dress puff out like an umbrella. "You don't see any swarms of tentacles around, do you? Or giant flying trains?"

"True enough. I suppose I must pronounce you sane…for now." He chuckles. "Though the fact that you're here throws _that_ judgment into doubt."

She pays his morbid riddles as little attention as she ever did. Walking along the stream, she kicks and splashes in the water the way she tells her children never to, else they catch colds. Her boots and stockings are soon soaked, but she relishes the feeling of wet cloth against skin, a sensation she hasn't experienced in years. The water is as clear as a mirror. Unable to resist the curiosity, she bends over to peer at her reflection. What stares back is an almost unrecognizable face. Heartshaped and flawless, with green eyes as large as the moon and a hundred times more bright. Beauty was hers once, is hers now, will be hers forever. She smiles, and a row of pearly white teeth smile back at her.

Cheshire's reflection appears besides hers. "You are just a reflection of the person on the other side of the water."

"Then I suppose I'll vanish the moment she steps away." Gingerly, she picks her way out of the stream back to land. With a shake of her head, droplets of water fly in all directions. Some splatter against the cat's fur, but he has apparently never heard of the saying that cats hate water. Patting down the sides of her disarrayed hair, she takes a deep breath and turns to him.

"This is my last visit here."

His smile stretches wide. "Then you should better make it…lasting."

She sighs, putting her hand on her hips. "I suppose I'll never get anything past you, will I?"

"I know your thoughts better than you know them, my dear Alice."

"You could at least pretend. Still, it's…it's hard to believe that everything will be over," she admits. "It seems like just yesterday that I followed that stupid rabbit down the hole."

His eyes are bright. "Time is a fluid thing. Like a train, it speeds up and slows down and has several stops along the way. Your train is at its final stop."

"But…" Alice bites her lip. There is an overwhelming sense of…_something. _It is equal parts relief and sadness and nostalgia, and wonder and boredom and excitement. It is like her first time falling asleep and waking up in Wonderland, and also the complete opposite. The future before her is so bright and lovely that it can't be true. She does not want to believe it for fear that it will shatter around her, but she yearns for it so desperately that she clutches her traitorous beating heart through her dress. Uncertainty, too, is there. Can happiness ever be eternal, if there is no sadness to compare it to? It is all such a jumble that she finally just gives up thinking about it. Shaking her head, she says. "It's just that – is it really all?"

"A saner person would ask, 'Is it finally all?' Trials and tribulations you have suffered plenty."

"I've almost grown fond of the place," she murmurs, "even though all I have are bad memories of it. It's an ugly and unfair and terribly uninteresting place, but once in a while something good happens, like a splotch of color on a black-and-white photo. And when that happens it almost makes up for everything else." She hesitates. "I'll miss it, I think."

"As you should."

"But – it's still so hard to believe, that after so long…" she looks around, and though the sun is bright and beautiful, she does not see the Vale of Tears; she sees the molten iron and steel of Hatter's Domain, the clear water and decrepit buildings of the Deluded Depths, the painted women and vases of the Mysterious East, the protruding tentacles and bloody eyes of the Red Queen's castle, and a million more visions of Wonderland, each more entrancing than the last. Not all are beautiful, not all are idyllic, not all are close to safe. She wants it so desperately that her perfect crimson lips finally part to ask the one question that has been on her mind since the very first time she fell from the sky.

"Can I really remain here forever?"

The cat smiles, and for once it is as sincere a smile as ever graced his lips. "For as long as you want."

She closes her eyes. The world fades to nothing around her, as still and silent as if it is frozen in a block of ice. A smile steals over her lips. Then her eyes open wide and the world explodes into motion. Laughing, she races forward, past the grinning cat, past the brook with its mirror water, past the trees and their tangled branches, past the dominos and butterflies and waterfalls and shrinking violets – past all that she has ever known. Everything fades to kaleidoscope colors blurring around her, but she never trips, never stumbles, and nothing is ever in her path to bar her way. She is its creator, its god, its sole recipient. There is all of Wonderland left for her to explore – countless lands awaiting discovery, countless more that will spring up at a thought. And there is no point in dawdling, even if she has all the time in the world.

A million dimensions away, an old woman's heart stops beating.


End file.
